Three times I forgave. But I should have left after the first.
This isn’t a cry of pain or a thirst for revenge. It’s the confession of a man who clung too long to something doomed from the start. I don’t want pity. I just hope someone reads this and avoids my mistakes. My name was Edward. Hers was Margaret. We lived in Manchester. And once, I truly believed she was the love of my life.
I was 32 when Margaret confessed: during a business trip, she’d been unfaithful. Just once, a stupid accident. She wept, clutching my hand, repeating that she loved me, that it meant nothing, that she’d simply slipped.
We had two children, a shared home, routines, history. I gritted my teeth and said: I forgive you. But something inside me died that day. Trust, certainly.
We went to marriage counselling. She started therapy. It seemed she wanted to fix things. And I… I wanted to believe.
Six months later, it happened again. This time with someone else. An old acquaintance. Secret messages, hidden meetings, weak excuses. I found the texts myself—left open on her phone. Again, there was silence, tears, the usual: “It didn’t mean anything,” “Just harmless flirting,” “You’re reading too much into it.”
Then, eventually, the truth. Yes, she’d been seeing him. Yes, more than once. Yes, she knew she was betraying me. But she couldn’t stop.
“You have to understand… I get lost sometimes. I need warmth. Sometimes it… goes too far,” she muttered.
And I stayed. For the children. For fear of being alone. For love—though it was gasping its last breaths.
I became someone else. Paranoid. Tracking her location, scrolling through her socials, checking her call logs. Then—an account on a dating site. Recent pictures. A radiant, confident Margaret, as if she’d never had a husband or children. I read the exchanges. Planned meet-ups. Compliments. Flirting.
I texted her: “Why? Again?”
She replied an hour later: “I don’t love you anymore. I’m tired of pretending. What we had is gone. I only stayed for the children. But now… you feel like a stranger. I can’t breathe around you.”
And just like that, I realised—nothing was left. Not even the fear of losing her.
Trying to understand where I’d lost her, I dug through old photos, documents, files. By chance, I found a folder on her laptop. “Private.” Screenshots, pictures, messages—all with different men. Dates stretching back. Some before we’d even married.
Margaret had been betraying me from the beginning. And I… I was just a convenient anchor. A man to play house with, to wear the mask of a devoted wife and mother—while she lived another, secret life.
I broke. Stopped eating. Quit my job. The children asked, “Dad, are you ill?”
How could I explain? How do you tell a child their mother has been in someone else’s arms for years?
I started drinking. Then therapy. Depression. Treatment. A year of numbness.
But the pain stayed. It just learned to hide.
Two years passed. I stood up. Learned to breathe without agony. Started writing. Speaking. Helping others. And yes—that’s how my blog began. Not about hatred. But about surviving betrayal. How to keep hold of the scraps of yourself. How to trust again—starting with yourself.
We crossed paths recently at our daughter’s birthday. Margaret arrived, stylish, eyes bright as ever. She hugged the children. I watched from the corner. Didn’t recognise her. That woman was a stranger.
She didn’t ask for forgiveness. And I didn’t offer it.
But in that moment, I understood: forgiveness isn’t a gift for the traitor. It’s freedom for yourself.
I don’t know if she’s forgiven herself. But I’ve forgiven me—for staying too long in a place I should have left.